GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Mordant memoir
MAYER WAKEFIELD sees a brilliant production of an autobiographical play set in the early years of apartheid
Astonishing: Hammed Animashaun and Lucian Msamati
[Helen Maybanks]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
‘Master Harold’ ... and the boys
National Theatre, London
IN HIS programme notes, Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard describes his 1982 play ‘Master Harold’ … and the boys as “probably the most intensely personal thing I have ever written.”
It’s so personal that he did not even change the names of the characters from that of his own — Hally, the pet name of a young Fugard — or the “two beautiful men” he describes as having ushered him from boyhood to manhood, Sam Semala (Lucian Msamati) and Willie Malopo (Hammed Animashaun).
Sam and Willie were the waiters in the Port Elizabeth tearoom owned by Fugard’s mother, which is beautifully brought to life on the Lyttleton stage by Rajha Shakiry’s delicately detailed design.
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